Sustainability

Over the last few decades, there has been a growing global awareness of the importance of mitigating and combatting climate change. The Sustainability Challenge has the task of ensuring that metamaterial development does not come at a cost to the environment whilst also identifying how metamaterials can play an active role in safeguarding the future of the natural environment.

The Sustainability Challenge is divided into two main themes. The first is energy which is devoted to how metamaterials can be used within the entire energy process from generation and conversion to storage and improving efficiency. Examples of work in this theme includes RF energy harvesting metamaterials and using mechanical metamaterials to harness vibrational energy.

The second theme is environmental impact which considers the role of metamaterials in ensuring that the future of the planet is not compromised by human activities. This field encompasses a broad range of works such as using reconfigurable metamaterials to reduce the waste caused by needing several specialised devices, using the structural properties of metamaterials to reduce the size of products, or by designing metamaterial alternatives to rare-earth materials.

By bringing together representatives across academia, industry, funding agencies and other partners, we believe metamaterials can have an incredible influence in an area that concerns the entire planet.

*This is a new Challenge Area so if you are an existing UKMMN member interested in this Challenge, please update your account preferences and signup to the mailing list.*